


(Please) Understand

by ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:56:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29533023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene
Summary: Swan queen prompt : "This doesn't have to be goodbye, does it? Not really?"
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17





	(Please) Understand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [waknatious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waknatious/gifts).



> A/N I was just looking at my inbox while trying to fight off yet another nightmare -boy, do those pile up quickly sometimes- so I decided to do a small battery of prompts. Mostly Cissamione Xd But, W, I’ll always love your ideas and despite my burn out still present I thought I could give you a small something… Just because I guess. Let’s consider this a very tardy xmas gift(?)
> 
> Set in: Let’s see, shall we? xD

**“This doesn’t have to be goodbye, does it? Not really.”**

She eyed the mostly filled book, the silence that seemed to grow over the walls of the small alcove in where it was being stashed -for recording purposes, some of the members of a Council that had been appointed after the Merge had insisted upon- suffocating above the pleading words Emma could have said to her as the portal kept on swirling behind her as burning as ever.

She hadn’t known then, when she had eyed her, sad smile on her lips, a nod already twisting her torso, a silent promise of something neither of them had been fully able to verbalize, what the younger woman had been thinking as they had gazed into each other. She had inferred, of course, had pretended to understand even as the sad realization that she was about to embark on an adventure the other woman wasn’t going to accompany her into had hit her and made her almost sway in the spot. She had tried hard, then, and ever since, to understand, to keep her own emotions at bay: she could see what Emma was trying to reach for. The commodity of something much more tangible than the constantly-changing expectations of a title that she had never grown into. Despite others ever-tightening words of affirmation that felt more like a curse than a blessing.

She had understood, had tried her damnest to, even if the very thought made her skin crawl and her heartbreak and her magic itch as if something was being irrevocably taken from her as the portal closed. She had understood, but she hadn’t known.

Yet, she thought with a contrite smile, a pained one that almost felt like a wince as she breathed into the slowly dusting room, the flames that jumped to life every time the door was opened thanks to an everlasting fire seeming to mock her as she stood as straight as her back permitted, the cruel aspect of being able to read the book, to see their actions so pristinely taken as photographs, was that she could know now, know what the other’s thoughts had been in that moment.

_“This doesn’t have to be a goodbye.”_

She could feel Emma’s shame at the intrusive thought, burning and turning everything ashen at the back of the blonde’s throat. The knowledge, intimate, solitaire, that she didn’t feel worthy of speaking such words into reality. She hadn’t deemed herself strong enough to word them back when there had been a child about to arrive to their world: the decision made; the path taken. And so, she hadn’t.

But she had still thought the words and so, the book, the ink, the magic that surrounded the very purpose of the magicked pages, had taken it from her mind and had reflected it onto the page. A page that shared those lines with a picture that if Regina narrowed her eyes, could almost feel like it was moving. Beckoning her, calling her in. If she only reached a little more, if she only moved closer towards the book…

Magic always came with a price. She had learned that lesson very early on, almost even before than she had been able to cast and hex with the flex of her fingers, with a pointed look. Knowledge, however, also came with one. And that lesson seemed to be one she still hadn’t quite been able to grasp yet. Not quick enough to move away from it before it left scars that were decidedly much more imprecise and deeper than the ones magic ever could create.

She wondered now, not for the first time, at the very bottom of the castle, surrounded by nothing but bricks and magic and sigils written by the fairies and warlocks that had appeared once the Merge had been complete, what would have she done if she had known Emma’s thoughts when the blonde had taken, apparently, the less difficult road. She would love to say that she would have told her “no”. That the distance would be closed, that they could still see each other. But she knew that she wouldn’t have said that, as much as she loved the idea to. After all, there was only a limited amount of pain and longing she was able to take at the time. She had, at least, learned that lesson.

And Emma, strong, breathtaking Emma, had been painful to look at. With the promise of the shadow of the one she had once been known diffused and darkened by decisions that had been made for her, by decisions she had made while trying, desperately, to find a place that didn’t burn away whatever little of herself still remained. Regina had once told her, before the moment that still twinkled at the pages in front of her had arrived, how she was too good, far too good, for the decisions she kept on making, for the ones she decided to perceive as her happy endings.

For someone so detached to what the magic realm the Enchanted Forest had sprouted from that particular germ had grown quickly: the vines thick and impossible to divide while they fed into everyone’s empty hope that nothing other than the Savior will ever be able to save them, to be the recipient of everything Good, Prophesized.

So, she had waited until the Portal had been closed and she had swallowed down as her magic, the one linked to Emma, shivered down her palms, up her veins, into her heart. And she might have been able to live with that, for a spell, if it hadn’t been for the book re-appearing once more after the Merge: the authorial aspect of Henry’s ability sort of blurred now, sentience being given to the pages by the sheer power that run through the conjoined realms and kingdoms. They had sealed the book away: a true testimony of arcs that now seemed like one big proof of how slowly, how devastatingly, she had fallen for the blonde.

For a time, she had been able to feign that she didn’t want to read where the book ended up into, what had been the last survived chapter recorded by it. Short after the coronation, however, she had opened it: shy almost, and had read.

And understood.

Regina closed her eyes and sighed, the sound losing itself into the walls, her magic purple and azure and white on her veins, squiggles of energy and ozone that climbed through her fingers in barely-there wisps.

Hope had been a poison once: a treacherous word, one that made her feel murderous, blood lusted. She knew she couldn’t quite claw herself out from the pool of dripping knowledge it presented.

Because, she thought as she turned and left, her steps echoing, the flames subsiding until nothing was left of them, if Emma had thought the same as she had done: lovesick, what would she then say, or think, or act, if she knew that she had wanted to kiss her, senseless, every day since she had gotten back?


End file.
